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FRUIT THEMED FIRM Apple's arguments that Samsung stole the tablet design from it have been debunked by the latter's lawyers, who found the devices in Stanley Kubrick's classic science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Apple versus Samsung tablet argument is keeping patent lawyers in sports cars and tailored suits at the moment and stopping judges from going on their summer breaks. Apple has argued that Samsung is aping its design and is fighting for a ban on imports, but Samsung has argued that you can see the design in 2001, a film that ironically starts with a bunch...

Update June 1, 6:00AM PDT: The bad guys have wasted no time. Hours after Apple released this update and the initial set of definitions, a new variation of Mac Defender is in the wild. This one has a new name, Mdinstall.pkg, and it has been specifically formulated to skate past Apple’s malware-blocking code. The file has a date and time stamp from last night at 9:24PM Pacific time. That’s less than 8 hours after Apple’s security update was released. On a test system using Safari with default settings, it behaved exactly as before, beginning the installation process with no password...

SMARTPHONE LAGGARD Microsoft has started to roll out its first major update to Windows Phone 7 (WP7) bringing, among other things (drum roll), copy and paste. Following last month's relatively minor preliminary WP7 update that bricked some Samsung devices, Microsoft's first major, actual WP7 update, upping the version to 7.0.7390.0, arrived without any further delays. The so-called "copy and paste update" brings faster application switching, WP7 Marketplace search, improvements to WiFi, Outlook, camera and audio and more Facebook integration. However Microsoft knows that copy and paste functionality is what users will notice straight away. As if it were a never...

FOUR US SENATORS have called on Google, Apple and RIM to remove DUI checkpoint alert apps, which can be used to help possibly tipsy drivers avoid the police. The Senators, Frank Lautenberg, Harry Reid, Charles Schumer and Tom Udall, sent a letter to the three companies asking them to remove the apps from distribution or take the DUI checkpoint feature be out of them. They claimed that the apps are "harmful to public safety". They said the apps act as a free tool for drinking drivers to evade checkpoints, which puts peoples' lives at risk. The apps either update in...

KOREAN ELECTONICS GIANT Samsung has announced a slim external 3D Blu-ray combo drive for the PC market. The SE-406A optical disk drive comes with Cyberlink Truetheater software and will play Blu-ray and 3D content, if the PC it's plugged into supports these formats. It also reads and writes CDs and DVDs and is USB powered. An interesting feature is the ability for the drive to transform 2D DVD movies into 3D ones. It is not clear how it does this and how good or convincing the finished product is, but it might tempt a number of people interested in seeing...

There's been a lot of discussion in the media recently about the threat that malware poses on the Mac OS X platform. It's clearly an emotive subject, with strongly held views on both sides. To help some of the discussions, here's a brief overview of some of the malware we have seen infecting Apple computers. From the early 1980s, right up until the present day, here are some of the highlights in the history of Apple Mac malware.

At the heart of the controversy over “body scanners” is a promise: The images of our naked bodies will never be public. U.S. Marshals in a Florida Federal courthouse saved 35,000 images on their scanner. These are those images. A Gizmodo investigation has revealed 100 of the photographs saved by the Gen 2 millimeter wave scanner from Brijot Imaging Systems, Inc., obtained by a FOIA request after it was recently revealed that U.S. Marshals operating the machine in the Orlando, Florida courthouse had improperly-perhaps illegally-saved images of the scans of public servants and private citizens. So much for not being...

Chances are you don't leave your front door unlocked. And you shouldn't leave your Wi-Fi network unsecured either. Many of you may have heard this before, but many still seem to not be doing anything about it. You should. Here's why. With a $50 wireless antenna and the right software a criminal hacker located outside your building as far as a mile away can capture passwords, e-mail messages, and any other data being transmitted over your network, and even decrypt data that is supposedly protected.

On this week's Apple Byte, we've got a bad apple. Brian Tong shows you how to take control of any Apple iPhone running iOS 4.1. Want to listen to someone's music? See their call history, e-mails, and more? Hopefully Apple will fix this bug soon, but for now, we'll show you how. Plus, the gaming world finally takes Apple seriously; the MacBook Air brings more power than you think; and don't expect to use your iPad the way you want to anymore

Microsoft has been at the top of the heap for almost as long as people have used PCs. They’ve managed to sustain an overwhelming competitive advantage, even after a decade’s worth of antitrust action and the astonishing transformation of Apple into a profit-making machine that has built one billion-dollar business after another while the entire rest of the tech industry is stuck in neutral. Indeed, the presence of Apple and Google as direct competitors suggests that maybe Microsoft is overdue to take a tumble. There is never a shortage of Apple-versus-Microsoft yammering in the blogosphere, but I haven’t seen much...

Pyongyang, October 17 (KCNA) -- Kim Jong Il, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and chairman of the DPRK National Defence Commission, provided on-site guidance to the newly built Special Dish House of Okryu Restaurant. The special dish house is another gift presented by Kim Jong Il to the Pyongyangites and all other people with his loving care as he always thinks of how to improve the people's diet. With the appearance of the house which has a total floor space of more than 6 000 square meters and is capable of accommodating thousands of visitors, the area...

According to data from Microsoft’s malware protection center, there has been an “unprecedented wave” of exploits against vulnerabilities in Oracle Sun’s Java software in 2010.

THis is a show that is now running on PBS, It centers around Rock and Roll Photographer Robert Knight. It is well worth watching if you are a old time rock and roller. See the source URL Speaking of old time rock and roll, I was in my favorite watering hole and the bass amplifier failed on the jukebox. All the hip hop sounded like just a bunch of people talking.

One of the most popular posts I wrote in 2008 was a set of step-by-step instructions to help you do what Apple doesn’t want you to do with iTunes for Windows (see Slimming down the bloated iTunes installer). Now that iTunes 10 has been released, it’s apparent that nothing has changed in Cupertino. Apple still gives its customers a monolithic iTunes setup program with absolutely no options to pick and choose based on your specific needs.

Various members of England’s technology press core have been invited to an event hosted by HTC scheduled to take place on the 15th of September at the Hyatt Hotel in London. Rumor has it that a successor to the highly praised HTC HD2 will be announced, and that it’ll be called the HD3, run Windows Phone 7, have a 4.5 inch OLED screen with a resolution of 1280 x 800, dual core 1.5 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM, 32 GB of built in storage, 8 megapixel camera, HDMI port, 4G capabilities of some sort, and all in a 10...

Finding the right risk to "discover" is the critical first step. If you pick the right risk, its intrinsic characteristics will make most of the risk assessment process a mere formality. Pick the wrong risk and the only thing at risk is your career. The risk should be unprovable. The very existence of your risk must be unprovable by conventional scientific methods. After all, if it was provable, somebody else (like a real scientist), would already have done the work and your risk assessment wouldn't be necessary. A risk may be unprovable either because it doesn't actually exist or because...

In case you have not heard or have not had this happen to you, a company named LoudMo is promoting a $2.00 pay per install program for its affiliates. This has led to an increase in stealth placement of an advertisment program that give you pop-ups that offer free downloads of FLV Player, Chameleon Tom,BabelFish, or Gateway Content Protection. The adware program is a drive by install that has largly been seen on Facebook and Bit Torrent, but will probably become more widespread. This program can infect all platforms and your anti-virus will not find or get rid of it...

On the heels of a warning that malicious executables can be embedded into PDF files and launched with minimal user interaction, Adobe is suggesting that users configure its PDF Reader product to limit the damage from an attack. Here are the instructions for mitigating a potential attack: Users can also turn off this functionality in the Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat Preferences by selecting > Edit > Preferences > Categories > Trust Manager > PDF File Attachments and clearing (unchecking) the box “Allow opening of non-PDF file attachments with external applications” This is what it looks like:

One thought I had after I first pulled the iPad out of the box and started playing with it was that I would buy one for my mother-in-law for her to use as her main computer. She has been bugging me to get her a computer for a couple of years, but she has a tendency to blow all her money on junk treasure on eBay and my wife really doesn’t want me making that easier for her. She asked me a couple months ago if she went to the store and bought a laptop would that be all she...

While some people like the mystery, others like to know what they are getting for their hard-earned dough. If you recently picked up a 16GB iPad, putting down $499 for the device, you’ll be pleased to know that your shiny new device is made up of parts costing at least $259. These estimates come from research firm iSuppli. Put another way, this means that some 52% of the cost of a brand new 16GB iPad is down to the components packed into the device. This percentage is similar to other Apple products, such as the iPhone 3GS.